Boasting dazzling power and technique, while also passionately attracted to jazz improvisation, Russian pianist Denis Matsuev is a favourite with the Budapest audience. One of the compositions he will perform in the company of Zoltán Kocsis and the Hungarian National Philharmonic is Rachmaninoff's notoriously difficult Piano Concerto No. 3, which demands special abilities from its player.
It is also more than a trial of stamina, speed and precision: the central musical idea of the piece is that it be sung on the instrument as if it were performed by a singer. Songs seem to reverberate in Schumann's symphony as well, the songs of the Rheine, and it was not without a reason that a contemporary critic heard the coarse and pithy power of folk songs in the melodies of the piece, and found that one of the movements resembled a sublime Gloria. A rural character and religious rapture: it is interesting that Rachmaninoff's piano concerto in D minor evokes similar associations, even though he claimed "the first theme of my Third Concerto is not taken from any folk-song forms or from church sources. It wrote itself.” In any case, there can be no doubt this concert will be the encounter of two composers of a like mind, as well as of two splendid pianists.

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